One of the hot topics of this years’ Transport Research Arena 2016 in Warsaw has been automation in transport. According to European Commissioner Violeta Bulc, it is especially due to the expected safety benefits “why autonomous driving is so high on the agenda”. Even though mainly focusing on road and rail transportation, MUNIN got a chance to represent the maritime view on this topic. On Monday, Thomas Porathe from NTNU/Chalmers put the MUNIN results in context with other ongoing European research projects within his scientific presentation about “A navigating navigator onboard or a monitoring operator ashore?”.

On Tuesday, Hans-Christoph Burmeister from Fraunhofer CML discussed then with the Director of the European Commissions’ DG Research and Innovation Ms. Clara De la Torre as well as further experts from rail and road research about “Human Factors, Safety and Acceptability in Automation”, how autonomous systems in all transport modes can become the future and how the interaction between the user and autonomous systems must be taken into account in current research.

Hans-Christoph Burmeister introducing the Plenum into the MUNIN project © Uwe Clausen